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Clues About iPhone 5 on Alibaba?

While expectations are high for the new iPhone that Appleplans to launch next Wednesday, some Chinese makers of iPhone cases are already moving ahead and selling what they say are the cases designed for the new model.

Alibaba.com

A search for “iPhone 5″ on Alibaba’s e-commerce site returns results such as this one, with items purporting to be cases for the device set to launch next week.

Given that the site is a trading platform for small businesses in and outside China, potential buyers could be, for example, retail stores that want to be able to sell cases as soon as Apple launches the new iPhone.

The next iPhone is likely to come with a screen measuring around 4 inches diagonally, compared with the current iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen, people familiar with the matter said in May.

The new iPhone is also using new technology that makes its screen thinner, which allows Apple to either make the whole device thinner or increase the battery’s capacity, according to other people with knowledge of the matter.

The product descriptions for the “iPhone 5” cases sold on Alibaba.com don’t include size details. Many of those iPhone case makers are based in Shenzhen, where Foxconn’s factories assemble Apple products.

This is not the first time that cases purportedly made for an upcoming Apple product were posted for sale on Alibaba.com – it also happened, for example, months before Apple launched its iPad 2 in March 2011.

But the “iPhone 5” cases come under particularly close scrutiny because the upcoming model is expected to demonstrate some major changes, including a larger screen. The iPhone’s screen has been 3.5 inches since the first model debuted in 2007.

–Juro Osawa

Watch what features the people on the streets of San Francisco think the new iPhone will have: